SOURCE: "Rant and Cant in Troilus and Cressida," in Essays and Studies, n.s. Vol. 22, 1969, pp. 33-56.

In the following essay, Thomson studies the expressive rhetoric used in Troilus and Cressida.

Questioning the Duke of Edinburgh's faith in 'Word-Power', an anonymous writer has recently asked: 'is not our own society, at least, one in which fluency remains a somewhat suspect achievement, in love as much as in politics?' Society under Elizabeth I, with rhetoric a recognized study in grammar school and university, was very much less sceptical. The modern reader may therefore sometimes, unhistorically, suspect a Word-Power in which Shakespeare believed. Henry V, for instance, exemplifies in council and in war the true eloquence of a leader whose thoughts and actions always match his words and whose 'sweet and honey'd sentences' are justly appraised as virtuous adjuncts of the royal character (Henry V, I. i. 50): on a...